Cran-Feta Turkey Burgers

I'm jonesing for nothing but bad, bad foods lately. I swear I nearly put a frozen pizza in the oven last night. Which would have been a disaster because I'm terrible at portion control when it comes to pizza. But I'm getting pretty darn good at making healthier substitutions.

So for my pizza craving, I used a multi-gran FlatOut and topped it with lettuce pesto, sliced tomato, fresh mozzarella, and kalamata olives. Much tastier AND leaner than a nasty frozen pizza!

Tonight the craving was for nachos. Or really anything crunchy and salty. After some thought, I made a batch of edamole. Perfect.

For my entree, I made my all-time favorite burgers - cran/feta turkey burgers. They were sweet from the cranberries, salty and tangy from the feta, moist from the onion, and all around fantastic. They taste like junk food, but really there's nothing too bad in them! I'm not going to pretend this is any kind of elegant picture or meal, cause it's not at all! But it hit the spot big time.

Cran-Feta Turkey Burgers

1 pound ground lean white meat turkey

1/2 cup dried cranberries, chopped

handful crumbled feta cheese

1/4 yellow onion, grated

Salt and pepper

Mix all ingredients together, form into 4 patties, grill a few minutes on each side until cooked through.

Freezer Dinner - Succotash

Something about the warm weather makes me feel the intense need to cram as many colors as possible onto my plate.

On this lazy, hazy Memorial Day I spent two hours trying to decide if I wanted to make anything for dinner or if I wanted ice cream instead. It's truly a testament to the amazing powers of this blog that I actually preferred to make dinner, and a lean one at that! It's always fun to make a healthy and tasty meal without having to go grocery shopping.

I had one goal for my succotash, I wanted it charred and crisp/tender, not soft. So they key was a screaming hot skillet, very little oil, and absolutely no salt until the end. I learned from the Food Network that adding salt softens everything and draws out the water. That's not what I was going for here - so ix-nay on the alt-say.

The other key to this dish is lima beans, and I used frozen ones. Lima beans are fat-free, low calorie, and high in fiber and protein. The bag also tells me they are an excellent source of vitamin C - who knew? I just like them because they're big and kind of meaty.

Succotash

red onion, diced

red bell pepper, diced

1/2 bag frozen corn

1/2 bag frozen lima beans

salt and pepper

red wine vinegar

good quality feta cheese

paprika

Crank the heat on the stove and let your pan heat up. Add a tiny splash of olive oil and the onion. Cook until you see a nice char on the onion, then add the red pepper, corn, and lima beans. These will also start to char, or at least heat through (depending on how much ice is on the frozen veggies/beans it may be too watery to char anything else). Add salt and pepper to taste and a splash of red wine vinegar to deglaze the pan. Top with crumbled feta and a dusting of paprika for more color and spice.

Guest Blogger - Colin

Here is another guest blog entry, with "chef's notes" from the man himself. Enjoy! -A

On the Arctic Char: This is the tastiest damn fish on the planet. I grilled it on a cedar plank, because it's yummy that way. The fish was topped with coarse sea salt, pepper, Hungarian paprika, dried oregano, and lemon juice. That is all you need know.

On the clams: First I sweated some shallots and fennel in olive oil. I've never cooked with fennel before, but it seemed like it would work. Add white wine, bring to a boil, then devour the tasty bivalves right quick.

On the bruschetta salad: Roma and cherry tomatoes, lots 'o basil, half a bulb of garlic, 3-4 tablespoons of capers, roasted red peppers, red pepper and pepper --with diced fresh mozzarella thrown in. And... yummy.

Grilled Romaine

Get ready for the easiest dinner ever.


This is a heart of romaine lettuce, sliced in half lenghtwise (make sure to keep the root piece intact so all the leaves stay together on the grill). Drizzle with olive oil and put on a screaming hot grill pan (or outdoor grill, or I think it would even work under a broiler). Grill until it has grill marks and starts to wilt. Turn over and grill on the other side for a few seconds.



Serve with a sliced ripe tomato, fresh mozzarella, diced red onion on the side.


Douse the whole plate with balsamic vinegar, a sprinkle of kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper.


To turn up the volume, I put some toasted pumpkin seeds over the whole shebang.


Happy Memorial Day.

A Trio of Salads

It's been too long since I've posted a salad picture and recipe! I've been missing my salads a lot lately. So today you get three of them!

The first salad is what I made for my dinner tonight. I tried to recreate a fantastic lunch I had a long time ago at a little outdoor restaurant in New York's South Street Seaport. It was the first time I'd heard of Chicken Paillard and I had to ask the waiter what it meant. If you don't know, paillard is a French word that means pounded very thin and grilled quickly. The chicken I had at the restaurant was pounded so thin it was as big as my plate! It was served with some greens lightly dressed with a lemon vinaigrette. I had to add some cannellini beans to mine because I love the whole beans and greens combo.

Chicken Paillard
1 chicken cutlet, pounded as thin as possible
arugula
cannellini beans
lemon juice
dijon mustard
olive oil
salt and pepper

Drizzle the chicken with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, grill a few minutes on both sides.
Mix the lemon juice, dijon, and olive oil with a whisk, add salt and pepper to taste.

Lightly dress the arugula with the vinaigrette, add some beans, pile on a plate, top with the chicken, and sprinkle the whole plate with finely grated parmesan cheese and a little more freshly cracked black pepper.

Next I needed to make something for lunch tomorrow. I have some really good feta cheese in the fridge that can't go to waste. And, I cleaned out my cupboards last week and found a box of Fantastic brand falafel mix. Now, I know I'm trying to avoid boxed or packaged foods, but it's simply not very green to throw away a perfectly good box of falafel. Also, the ingredient listing was fairly short and all items I could pronounce so I have made an exception. Maybe next time I want falafel I will try to make it from scratch. I made sure to broil the falafel patties instead of frying for obvious health reasons.

Greek Salad
Field greens
Good qualify feta cheese
Dried cranberries
Broiled falafel patties (packaged mix and water, formed into patties, drizzled with olive oil and broiled a few minutes on each side)
Balsamic vinaigrette


And finally, I had to make this recipe when I saw it on Apartment Therapy. It is honestly the best thing I've eaten in days. I can't put into words how much I love this salad. Something about the sweetness of the cranberries and rice wine vinegar combined with the raw broccoli and toasty almonds, and the mild bite of the red onion....I actually made "mmmm" noises as I took the first bite. It's a recipe I won't be making very often because it's rather addicting and I'm worried I will eat the whole bowl in one day. Plus I'm not sure how lean it really is, since it contains both mayo and sugar, but I am hoping the amount of broccoli offsets most of that! Finally, it gave me an excuse to use my grater attachment on my food processor.

I won't repost the recipe here, because I followed it exactly (I even measured!) but here's how pretty it is.

Praise salads!

Green Beans with Almonds and Lentil Soup

I started tonight's dinner with an epic FAIL! You know how when you start to get a big head about something, like thinking you know what you're doing in the kitchen? That's when you screw up badly enough to bring your ego crashing back down to earth. Clearly, I am cursed when it comes to lentils (I mentioned in February a gross lentil/kale/tomato soup I tried to make).


All during my ride home from work and my walk around Lake Hiawatha, I was looking forward to making this lentil salad recipe from Mark Bittman. When I got home, I realized the only lentils I had were orange, and not the little green French kind. Oh well, lentils are lentils, right? WRONG! I threw the lentils in some water with some bay leaves and salt, brought them to a boil, then simmered. Orange lentils do not need to simmer for 40 minutes like French lentils, and in fact they fall apart completely after about 20 minutes. When I checked on them, they were pure mush. I should have known this from my Mpls Community Ed Indian cooking class but the brain wasn't working.


I was able to salvage these lentils, though (because I can't stand to throw away food) by adding a couple vegetarian boullion cubes and it turned into a nice almost creamy orange soup, not unlike my yummy split pea soup (which I have made about 4 times since I posted about it).



To go with my last minute lentil soup, I made green beans with almonds, which was on Rachel Ray yesterday. I didn't want to use the canned fried onions though, so this is how I did it.


Green Beans and Almonds
Fresh green beans
Handful almonds
1 shallot
1 Tbsp butter


Blanch the green beans in 1 inch boiling salted water. Drain and set beans aside. In skillet, melt butter, add almonds and diced shallot and cook until almonds are toasted and shallot is softened. Add back the green beans and season with salt and pepper.

PS - I tried that egg baked in a tomato thing again...overcooked again! Will keep trying until I get it right. A very delicious assignment.

Colin Cooks Again

My friend Colin cooked for a group of us again last night. You gotta go here to see another example of this man's fine culinary skills. The thing that kills me is that he never uses a recipe, does internet research, or worries about how things will turn out like I do constantly. He cooks purely by instinct, which I think distinguishes a real chef from a simple cook.




His inspiration for this meal was a great course he had at his sister's wedding in France. He got some halibut from his home away from home (Coastal Seafoods) and a beautiful boquet of colorful veggies spiked with balsamic vinaigrette, served over orzo and topped with some crazy herb-infused oil. Needless to say, the meal was amazing.

Not to be outdone, Marney whipped up a doozy of a dessert!